


does she know that we bleed the same

by HeavenChild



Series: The Pack Survives [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-19
Updated: 2019-05-19
Packaged: 2020-03-07 15:41:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18876178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HeavenChild/pseuds/HeavenChild
Summary: “Those are stories, dearest brother. And stories aren’t meant to be truthful. They are meant to make us dream, to make sure we won’t run away until we can’t. I will marry the King, I will bear his children, I will stay faithful to him. But after that, I want you out of my sight and back to Winterfell. I want you and your damn honor gone!”Or the one where Lyanna died and Robert still married a Stark.Title is from Where's My Love by SYML





	does she know that we bleed the same

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first story. If there any grammar mistakes, feel free to tell me. I hope you like it!

_284 AC, King’s Landing_

Alysanne didn’t hate Robert. The man had been courteous enough, and even when it was obvious she wasn’t the one he liked, he had made no mention of Lya when she was near, and he had at least tried to keep his visits to the brothels discreet. This was why she didn’t hate the man, because at least, he _tried_.

But Ned… Ned, dear Ned… She hated him. She hated his judgmental stares, his promises, his lies… She wished him dead more than anything in the whole world. She wished Ser Arthur Dayne had killed him, she wished she could push him from the highest tower in King’s Landing and watch him fall to his death.

He talked about honor and oaths and kingslaying, but he knew nothing. He didn’t know about Elia and her children. He didn’t know how sweet Rhaenys had been killed, how many stabs she received while begging for her mother and her father and the Sword of the Morning. Alysanne could still hear the mocking voice of the Lannister man as he recounted his tale, as he described in the most gruesome details how he had murdered a child of two, barely three. She heard it every single moment of the day, she dreamt it every night.

Ned never knew about Ashara even when he claimed to be taken with her. He didn’t know about the bruises she kept hidden, about how Ser Arthur was forced to watch while his sister was humiliated for protecting Queen Elia. Of course, she was never dishonored, but there were worst ways to torture someone.

She hated Ned. She hated Brandon, she hated Lya. She hated all of them, save for her mother and Benjen.

Alysanne knew Lya never wanted to marry, and she never believed entirely for one moment her sister was truly abducted. When Ned came back with the child he claimed as his own even when he had Lya’s eyes, Alysanne cursed him and stormed out.

_Like a child_ , he had lectured her later.

A child? A child!? A child their father had wanted married off to a man almost twice her age, a child he chose to sell to a den of stags, lions and vipers!

She hated him. And when she realized the hell his wife would make him go through for the ‘bastard’, she felt a cold satisfaction.

“Lady Stark?” called a voice, and she turned to meet the gaze of her newest handmaiden, a girl of three and ten.

“Yes?”

“We have finished. Should I fetch your brother?”

Alysanne narrowed her eyes. “No. I wished to be alone for a moment.”

The girl worried, but she sent her away. She took a deep breath to prepare herself for what was to come, and she would have managed had it not been for the sudden knock on her door. It opened before she could ask to be left alone, and Ned approached her.

“Alys? I was told you wished to be alone. I don’t think it is wise, soon, you’ll-“

“Be Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, I know. Anything else?”

Ned frowned at her, and Alysanne almost wanted to laugh at his hypocrisy.

“You should be more cautious, Alys. This is not Winterfell anymore. This is not your home. Not yet.”

She watched him with thunder in her eyes. “This isn’t? I hadn’t noticed in the four years I was gone!”

“Alys, please. It’s hard enough as it is. I know you miss Lya, I know what you promised all those years ago. But she’s dead. She’s not coming back.”

“I’m aware, Ned. Just as I’m aware who Jon _Snow_ is. And I don’t care about that promise, I haven’t cared for years now.”

“You… How do you…? Forget it. Look, I know this isn’t the easiest thing to accept, but you can’t act like a willful child anymore. You have duties. Honor demands-“

“You want to talk to me about honor!? Why don’t you say it in front of _her_ grave!? She had chosen a name, you know! One for both our grandmother and our sister. She was convinced it was a girl. And she was right. Now, the name is gone, and so is she.”

Alysanne stopped for a moment, breathing in and out, moving her hands she had slammed on the table in her anger.

“You don’t get to talk to me about honor. You don’t get to talk to me about _anything_. Do you remember those books you used to read to me when I couldn’t sleep? The ones about stories of dragons and princesses and knights in shining armor?”

“Alys, I-“

“I don’t read them anymore. I see them, and the only thing I want is to throw it away or burn it. Those are stories, dearest brother. And stories aren’t meant to be truthful. They are meant to make us dream, to make sure we won’t run away until we can’t. I will marry the King, I will bear his children, I will stay faithful to him. But after that, I want you out of my sight and back to Winterfell. I want you and your damn honor gone!”

She had yelled the last words. She was huffing, tears she hadn’t noticed sliding down her face. She casted one last look to Ned.

“Lya got a choice I never had, Ned. She took it, and she left me to be locked in her place.”

She didn’t wait for his answer to exit her room.

 

* * *

 

 

 Six of the Seven Great Houses were present when she arrived at the Sept. The Martell had ignored the invitation – she still couldn’t fathom why Jon Arryn had thought fit to invite them – and she couldn’t exactly blame them. Ned was escorting her, and the cloak upon her back did little to reassure her when she knew it would soon be gone. Replaced with the colors of another House, but not the House it was _supposed_ to be.

She never loved the match her father had chosen for her, but it had still been _his_ choice. Now… now they were all gone, and she was about to marry a man who only saw the ghost of her sister when he looked at her.

Robert _tried_ , and she couldn’t fault him for loving another, just as she couldn’t fault Catelyn for probably still being in love with Brandon. It didn’t mean it didn’t hurt, but she could at least understand. And even if the man would only ever see her as a second Lya, she had no way out. Begging hadn’t worked for Lya, eloping neither. Why would it be any different for her?

She lost track of the time when she arrived next to Robert Baratheon. She looked straight ahead and she found solace in the walls of another castle, one who shone under the stars and who was filled with the soft laughter of the only one who had actively sought to protect her.

She went back to herself when Robert hesitantly moved to place his own cloak on her shoulders and she bit her own lips to keep still, she forced herself to accept it. When she looked in his eyes, she again ignored the bile in her throat, and with a smile she hoped looked happy, she said the words that would seal her fate.

“With this kiss, I pledge my love, and take you for my lord and husband,” just as Robert echoed “…and take you for my lady and wife.”

The kiss tasted of salt.

 

* * *

 

 

Alysanne thought she had shed more tears than she could cry in the last years. Turned out she had been wrong.

Robert wasn’t a kind man, even when he tried, it seemed. The bedding had been painful. The awakening too. She had eyed the blood with distaste, the red marks that now marred her skin even more so. It had been painful, but she could have dealt with it. She could have tried. But then… then…

_“Lya. Lya, I love you. I love you. Be mine.”_

His words echoed inside her mind. She knew he was in love with Lya, she knew he only saw Lya when he looked at her.

She still had thought he would have enough respect to keep it to himself.

 

* * *

 

 

Alysanne was pregnant and she hated it. Pregnant in the first moon of her marriage with Robert. People said she was lucky. She considered herself cursed.

With a child, she couldn’t go anywhere alone. Her so carefully laid out plan was based on the fact Ser Jaime Lannister would be the one to guard her. Robert – despite Jon Arryn’s recommendation to release him from his vows – had refused to do so after the man himself had come to argue with them. Ser Jaime was one of the only one who knew of the fear, along with Ser Barristan. However, between the two of them, he was the sole one who accepted to give her peace when the dreams became too much, when the walls became tainted by blood and when the laugher of a gone king resounded around them.

With a child, she would never be left alone.

Alysanne thought of Ashara, of Starfall and of Palestone Tower. She thought of little Allyria who was so loved by those she called ‘father’ and ‘mother’, and she thought of Benjen, who she hoped hadn’t yet left for the Wall. Benjen would know what to do.

He always did.

Nine moons. It was only nine moons. After that, it would end. All the pain, the screams, the whispers and the ghosts.

It was only nine moons.

 

* * *

 

_285 AC, King’s Landing_

Nine moons later, when she laid among her own blood, Alysanne couldn’t help but laugh.

Three children. There had been three children. Fleetingly, among her own delirium, she wondered if those were the three head Rhaegar Targaryen had apparently killed her sister for, the ones he had been searching for so despairingly. Given their genders, however, they weren’t.

Dimly, she thought of Jon, and she laughed even more. The Last Dragon would never have gotten his three heads either way. Had Lyanna also been like this when she gave birth? Probably not. She had one child, and she died. But Lya had been so strong, so determined. Woldblood ran strong among her. Among Alysanne…not so much. Lya had been strong, but she had still died, laying in a pool a blood, the same as hers.

How funny. Even in their deaths, the Gods still chose to make her a ghost of her sister. She would always be Lyanna’s shadow.

The same blood had given them life, and now, the same blood was taking it from them.

The screams around her made her lose her focus and she instead started instead of her children.

The eldest one was a girl, all Baratheon, with blue eyes and black hair. She watched quietly, much like how Alysanne herself had been (or so had her mother told her) and Alysanne wanted her to scream, for staying silent had never brought her anything good. Not in what she could now remember among the fragments of her memories.

The girl would be called Ellya, she had already told Robert so, and Benjen and Ned would make sure of it. Ellya for Ellyn Estermont – Cassana’s mother – and for Lya – her sister – she had explained while ignoring their grimaces.

_One for the grandmother, another for your sister._

She remembered what Ashara had told her. Robert had accepted the name, and it was all that mattered. She couldn’t care less about what the Realm had to say about it. She would not let them forget about Elia Martell, even if her revenge was as petty as this.

The other two were boys, twins, she was told. She didn’t have the strength to look at them, nor to listen to the Maester currently by her side. She didn’t want to live anyway. Whether it was in childbirth or by doing the same as Ashara, why would it matter?

She had done her duty. She had married a man who never touched her again after the first night, probably too ashamed of himself after Ned saw the bruises (Alysanne wished she had thrown the words _I told you so, and so did Lya!_ to his face).  She had bore him three children; an heir, a spare, and a bargaining chip. She had done her duty. Nobody could say anything when she let go.

She had done her duty. _The one Lya never did_.

She was free.

**Author's Note:**

> About the three children :  
> \- Ellya is a girl with Baratheon look  
> \- The other two boys are identical twins with Stark looks  
> They are not triplets. It is rare, but possible.


End file.
